Local Guide

Traditional Peanut Sauce Salads Cuisine in Indonesia

Hello FlokqJune 12, 2020

As an archipelago state, Indonesia has many cuisines with approx 5.350 traditional recipes. Indonesian cuisine often exhibits complex flavor from some ingredients and a mixture of bumbu spices. Usually, Indonesian dishes are rich in flavors. Talking about local cuisine, this country has its salad you should try. Salad is a bowl of vegetables and fruits, usually served with a salad dressing. Salad can be served as an appetizer, main course, dessert, and side salad. Besides being healthy because it consists of various fruits and vegetables, salads are delicious and easy to find. In Indonesia, there are several kinds of salads, one of them contains peanut sauces. This article will give you 5 differences between peanut sauces salads. Here we go!

Gado-gado

Gado-gado is a peanut sauced salad and one of popular dishes in Indonesia. Generally, Gado-gado is formed by tempe, boiled eggs, vegetables, lontong, and boiled potatoes. Interestingly, the word gado means eat something without rice. Gado-gado can be interpreted as mixed, since there are some vegetables and other ingredients that are mixed with peanut sauces.  What makes delicious gado-gado delicious is peanut sauce, made from fried peanuts, lime juice, tamarind juice, terasi, chillies, salt, and coconut sugar. It’s easy to find gado-gado in Indonesia, but usually each area has its own moderation.  For example, Javanese has a similar peanut sauce salad, which is pecel. As mentioned before, as a famous dish, you can find gado-gado everywhere, from food stalls to hotels. Generally, you can eat gado-gado alone, but it will be more delicious with crackers and lontong. Gado-gado can be served as breakfast, lunch, and dinner, depending on your preference.

Ketoprak

Ketoprak is another famous peanut sauce salad from Jakarta, and similar to gado-gado. But, the peanut sauces are different since gado-gado contains brown sugar to sweeten.  Interestingly, Singapore as a neighborhood country has similar dishes with ketoprak, which is satay bee hoon. Ketoprak includes tofu, vegetables, rice vermicelli, rice cakes such as lontong and ketupat, and bean sprouts. To sweeten, sometimes the sellers use soy sauce. As claimed by popular Betawi tradition, the name of this dish came from it’s ingredients, ket for ketupat, tahu and tauge, and digeprak, which means mashed. You can find ketoprak everywhere as this dish is spread all over Java, but usually, ketoprak is available in street food and  some restaurants. Generally, the sellers make ready ingredients at home and then mix them in front of customers. In order to make it more delicious, usually people eat it with kerupuk.

Karedok

Karedok is part of famous Indonesian salad dishes. This dish originally from West Java, and linked to Sundanese ethnic. This dish uses healthy vegetables such as cucumber, bean sprout, cabbage, eggplant, and many more. Karedok is similar to gado-gado, but the difference is karedok’s vegetables served raw, while Gado-Gado served the vegetables are boiled. Karedok is also called lotek atah, because it uses raw vegetables. Generally, the dressing for this dish contains red pepper, palm sugar, terasi, fried peanut, and other ingredients. You can find karedok everywhere, mostly in food stalls and restaurants. The peanut sauce dressing poured on top of the vegetable salad before serving, is what differentiate karedok from a simple vegetable salad. Usually, karedok is served with fried kerupuk or emping to make it more delicious. You can eat karedok with lontong or rice. 

Lotek

Lotek is another Indonesian salad from West Java. It’s similar to gado-gado, which is vegetables stew with peanut sauce. Usually, the healthy vegetables that formed lotek are spinach, cabbage, long beans, bean sprouts, and chayote. Lotek also contains tempeh, galangal, and shrimp paste, so it’s different from other peanut sauces salads. Generally, people eat lotek with rice or lontong, based on preference. To make it more delicious, you can add kerupuk or fried onions. 

Pecel

Pecel refers to peanut sauce salad dressing from Java. Pecel is one everyone’s favorite Indonesian salad, and famous in some areas such as Yogyakarta, East Java, and Central Java. Pecel consists of some healthy vegetables, such as long beans, cassava leaves, basil leaves, cucumber, and bean sprouts. The peanut sauce is the combination of sweet and spicy, consisting of brown sugar, galangal, chillies, and many more. This dish has many variations, such as pecel lele, pecel pakis, pecel kerang, pecel tumpang, and many more. But, pecel madiun is the famous pecel variation. Some areas also have their own pecel, for example pical sikai from Minangkabau. Pecel can be served with rice, and it’s called nasi pecel. As a famous dish, you can find pecel easily in food stalls, restaurants, and many more.

Here are 5 Indonesian salads that contain peanut sauces. now you can enjoy different salad variations. Enjoy your meal! Don’t forget to read other recommendations in our blog!

Also check out some of the best coliving options in Jakarta here!